I Will Follow You Into the Dark
by JennieMac
Summary: Total romance fluff may or may not be part of a longer work, depending on how ambitious I get. Rated M for...well, you'll see.


Disclaimer: Me no write books that sell. JK Rowling own characters in following story. Me no mean infringe copyright. Ugh.

Further disclaimer: I have never written anything like this before, and I may never do so again. I've just been in a weird mood lately, and I had to get this out of my system. Comments are welcome.

**I Will Follow You Into the Dark**

She waited until his light had gone out.

She waited in the hallway outside his door, staring at the thin strip of light which meant the lamp was still lit, that he was still awake. She heard no sound from inside the room. She made no sound.

She played it over and over in her mind, what had happened downstairs. They had been talking about the next mission, what they would have to do and where they would have to go. They had been talking about going into the Lion's Den. Into the place where Nagini slept. The place where the last Horcrux hid. They had been talking about how one of them had to go beforehand and ensure that the place was empty except for the giant snake, how the chosen person would almost certainly be walking into an ambush, and how they may as well call this what it really was: a suicide mission. That is, Harry and Hermione had been talking, fuming and arguing. Ron had been listening to them, uncharacteristically silent. He had sat there turning an eagle-feather quill over and over in his hands, staring past it and into the fire and not saying a word.

Suddenly, after being silent for a great while, he had spoken. Suddenly he had said, _I'll go._ Just that, just those two words, and she'd opened her mouth to protest, but Harry had beaten her to it. _Ron…_ he'd said. But Ron had continued speaking: _You know it has to be me. It can't be you, Harry. You have to live. You have to make it to the end._ Then he'd spoken to her, though without meeting her eyes. _It can't be you, either, Hermione. You know too much. You can help Harry more than I ever could._

_Bullshit,_ she'd said. Just the one word. But it, the swear, the word she had never before uttered in his hearing, had forced Ron to finally look at her. He hadn't gotten mad or tried to fight with her, the way he normally would, and that was how she knew he was serious. _It's not,_ he said quietly. He looked back at Harry. _You both know it has to be this way. I'm going to leave in the morning. They won't be expecting it, not so soon after the ambush at the Ministry. I'll be catching them off guard. It's just like chess, Harry._

His words, from many years ago, echoed through her mind. _That's chess…you have to make sacrifices._

Ron stood up, then, and walked toward the stairway leading to the inn's upper floors. He'd left them without another word, as was their custom the night before a mission: there were no goodbyes, no tears. Nothing to distract them from what they were doing, and who they were doing it for.

And Harry was going to let Ron go, the way he'd let him go before. She could tell this by the way Harry hung his tousled black head, the way his arms hung limply between his knees, the fingers working together, the knuckles cracking. He wandered upstairs not long after Ron.

Hermione hadn't risen for quite a while. Ron had ended their argument more easily than she'd imagined. And the hell of it was: he was right. He was the best one to go, not because he was expendable, as he thought, but because he was the best strategist, because he would know how to do it, because he'd made a hobby of cornering his opponents and defeating them with a few clever moves. He had been right, about everything: Harry could not go, he was too valuable, and Hermione herself…well, she had a problem thinking on her feet, something that would clearly be a liability in this particular mission. Ron was the one. And he would probably be walking into an ambush, because the Death Eaters knew as well as they did where Nagini was hiding, and she was the only one left. The last Horcrux. The Death Eaters would defend it with their lives. And Ron would probably lose his, but he'd be giving Harry and Hermione a chance to sneak in and kill the snake while the others were distracted.

Stupid, noble boys.

There was only one thing for it.

She sat in front of the fire for a long while, staring into the flames, letting them leave gold and purple imprints on her vision, before making up her mind what that one thing was. And once she had, she stood up with no further hesitation, warmed her hands by the dying embers and turned to the clock on the mantel. It was coming up on three in the morning. Dawn would come too soon to waste any more time being scared.

She climbed the stairs fully expecting him to still be awake, knowing that she'd have to wait until he put his light out or she wouldn't be able to do this at all. So she stood outside his door and she tried not to make the floorboards creak when she shifted her weight, and she waited, biting her lips and picking at her cuticles, until it was dark.

She waited, she chided herself, because she was a coward. It would simply be easier to do this in the dark. Easier if she couldn't see him and lose her nerve, after this last year of silence and long looks between them and lying awake on either side of a campfire, burning with the need to do something, anything, but somehow, somehow, never quite able to do it. She was always braver in her own mind, but when it really came down to it, she couldn't make that last step, not while those jewel-blue eyes were burning into her, not while her stomach was flipping and churning and threatening to choke her with every breath. No, she could speak more eloquently to the Ron-in-her-head, always.

So when she saw the sliver of light under his doorway go out, when it was completely dark, she felt herself stepping forward. She touched the warm wood of the door with the flat of her palm, took a small breath, turned the knob silently with her other hand, and pushed the door open.

It was, as she had hoped, completely black inside his room; she waved her hand in front of her face to test, and saw nothing. And he was, as she had predicted, not sleeping: she clearly heard him pull himself upright against his pillows as soon as the door opened and quickly shut behind her.

"Who's there?" She could tell, from the gruff, strained sound of his voice, that he already had his wand in his hand and was ready to strike.

Best to speak, then, before he hexed her. He was rather deadly with that _Petrificus Totalus;_ then again, he had learned from the best. "It's me," she whispered, shuffling a few steps forward and throwing her hands out in front of her.

She felt, as much as heard him sag back into the pillows, lowering his wand. "Hermione?" he said. His voice wavered, whether in fear of relief she couldn't tell. "What are you, um…"

"Shhh," she said. She came forward another few halting steps and felt her left leg bump into the bed. Putting her hands down, she felt her way along the mattress until she found one of his feet under the covers; he jerked at her touch, but she was already moving forward to settle on the edge of the bed next to him. "We don't have a lot of time, here."

She felt him shifting around, trying to find a comfortable sitting position while not touching her. This was familiar: the two of them had gone to great pains, this year, to avoid anything like physical contact. They'd had their moments, certainly, when an accidental brushing of hands or knees had frozen them mid-sentence or –stride, when the urge to wrap themselves up in each other threatened to overwhelm what could possibly be the most important year of their lives. They'd always resisted, though. There was too much hurt, too much betrayal in their past, too much at stake in the present moment, to risk giving in to what they both wanted.

But no more.

"I can't bear the thought of you going, tomorrow," she began in a narrow, hoarse voice, and felt the rest of the words building up inside of her, clamoring to be let out, beginning to trip over one another, and she remembered to think of the Ron in her head, not the real Ron sitting in front of her. And her voice was stronger when she spoke. "And I couldn't bear the thought of you being alone tonight, before you go."

"But…"

"And I need to tell you something, before I say anything else."

A beat of silence, and then he asked, his voice still wavering, "What?"

She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together in her lap. She looked into the direction his voice was coming from, struggling to make out some shape of him. She pictured his too-small pajamas, his lovely wavy red hair, his crooked smile. "I, um…" She felt him move again, and closed her eyes; somehow, that made it easier. "Ron, I love you." She felt her face burning into the darkness; the inevitable flush started on her cheeks, made its way to the roots of her hair and spread down to her collarbones. "I've loved you for a long time now. I think I loved you before I knew that I did. Does that make sense? No, I know it doesn't. But I loved you last year and the year before that, and…even when I tried to hate you, I loved you. And no matter how I tried to reason it out, I couldn't, just could not, let you go tomorrow without telling you." She paused for another deep breath. Ron had made not a sound. "So…look, you don't have to say anything back. You don't have to talk at all, if you don't want to. Just let me sit here tonight, because I know you're not going to sleep either, and because I really don't want you to be alone."

She opened her eyes again, seeing nothing but black. He still had not moved or spoken. For a long while, it seemed, they sat in silence.

Then, Ron let out a long breath of his own. When he spoke, his voice was as hoarse as her own had been. "Why…why didn't you tell me before?"

She looked down at her hands, not seeing them but feeling them twist in and around one another, the sore cuticles brushing against the damp palms.

"Well, there wasn't really ever a good time, this year or last. And, because I'm a coward. And I suppose…I didn't know if you felt anything the same-"

"Where are you?" he said abruptly, and she felt one of his hands pass very close to her face as he attempted to find her in the dark. He was reaching blindly, and she almost had to duck to avoid him.

"Here," she said, grabbing at his flailing hands and missing. She half-stood, leaning against the bed for balance. "Want me to turn on the lamp?"

"No," he said, making a blind grab and finally brushing against one of her knuckles. He grabbed hold and held her hand very tightly; his palm, too, was sweaty, his fingers trembling. "No, don't turn on the light."

"Why not?"

"Because," he said, and she felt his other hand hovering around her right ear as she sat down again. His fingertips caught in the ends of her hair, and he brought his hand to her face. He touched her cheek, smoothing his thumb along her cheekbone. "Because, I'm pretty sure this is a dream." He spoke slowly, cautiously, as if measuring every word. "And if I'm dreaming, then turning on the lamp will probably wake me up. And I…_really_…don't want to wake up from this one."

"Oh," she breathed. It took a few seconds for his statement to register; when it did, she leaned her cheek into his hand and felt a familiar, vibrant thrill beneath her skin, where he was touching her. It was the same tickling spark she felt when they accidentally brushed hands, when she leaned her head on his shoulder, when she climbed onto the back of his broomstick and held him around the waist and he flew them away, the two of them racing above the clouds. _Oh, bliss._

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?"

He cleared his throat softly, and squeezed her hand. "You know I love you too, right?"

She felt the flush on her face and neck intensify, and was very glad he couldn't see her. "Well…no, I wasn't sure, not entirely, I mean I-"

"I do," he said. He brought his thumb down and traced it along her bottom lip; she felt her jaw go slack. "For a long time now," he said. "Hermione?"

She didn't think she'd ever get enough of him, saying her name in that gentle, hopeful way. "Yeah?"

She felt the hand holding hers begin to tremble more violently. "Do you think it'd be all right…I mean, can I…that is, would you want to, um…"

"Oh, for goodness' sake," she said. She leaned forward in the dark, like taking a blind leap into emptiness, and found his face with her lips. His skin felt just as hot as her own. She missed his mouth on the first try, catching him with her kiss just at one corner of his chin, and felt the tingle of something like an electric spark between them, stronger than when they'd touched before. He must have felt it too, because she heard him draw in a sharp breath as he turned his face toward hers, and their mouths found each other. Neither of them dared move or breathe; his hand had dropped from her face to her shoulder, and his other hand clenched hers tightly as they remained frozen in what was, possibly, the sweetest kiss she'd ever had.

No, definitely the sweetest, she decided as the kiss ended and their lips hovered inches apart. "Is that what you were trying to ask?" she whispered, feeling her breath warm his skin.

"Uh…yeah."

"Thought so."

And she could hear the grin in his voice and his soft chuckle as he answered, "Know-it-all."

They kissed again, and this time it was different: there was the spark again, as their lips met, but there was also the force of words in every action: with her kiss she told him everything she hadn't been able to say for all those years, and with his hand, which slid from her shoulder to the back of her neck and buried itself in her tangled hair and pulled her closer, he welcomed her and told her he felt the same. When they finally broke apart again, she felt that if they never spoke again, they would have said all they needed to say to one another. They rested with their foreheads touching.

When she was able to speak, she said, "Wow."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Can we do that again?"

"Yeah," she said. It was all she had time to say. The darkness didn't seem to be a problem any longer; they were learning one another by touch. She had never been so absorbed, so mesmerized by anything: his lips were warm and velvety and full, and she drew away slightly to pepper them with feather-light kisses before moving in for another long, hungry kiss. His hand unclasped from hers and made its way up her arm, tracing lightly with his fingertips and making her shiver, finally joining his other hand buried in her hair. She let her arms snake around his waist and they were holding one another and kissing deeply, and nothing, nothing had ever felt so good.

She felt him begin to back away, and felt a daring recklessness take her over, and before she really knew what she was doing, she let the tip of her tongue sneak out between her teeth and touch him, just the barest flick of a touch, on the cushion of his lower lip.

He drew in another sharp breath at this, and tightened his hands on the back of her neck for an instant before drawing back. They stared at one another in the dark. "Why didn't we do this years ago?" he asked.

"I have no idea," she breathed, then let out a small giggle as she rested her head on his shoulder.

"Me neither," he said, with a little chuckle of his own, and rested his chin on her forehead.

She laughed again. "Well, I can tell you why we didn't do it last year."

He was shocked into silence for a moment, then muttered, "Shut it, you," before pulling her close and wrapping his arms fully around her, stroking her hair. She rested her cheek in the crook of his neck. There was nothing in the world more natural, more right than this. Nothing.

He pulled back and cupped her face with both his hands. "Hermione, listen. About…last year. I'm really-"

"Ron-"

"I'm really sorry about…what I-"

"You don't have to explain yourself," she cut in. "We're past it. Aren't we?"

He paused, still holding her face between his two hands. "Yes," he said finally. He pulled her closer and tickled her lips with a series of his own light kisses, before imitating her trick and flicking his tongue, very lightly, over her bottom lip. She shivered and answered his gesture with another, slightly bolder, of her own. His hands crept back into her hair and for a long time, there was nothing else in the world but the two of them and their kisses. "I still can't really believe this," he murmured into her chin some time later, before covering it, too, with kisses. He made his way up her jawline, whispering to her all the way. "It's a dream…if I could look into that sodding Erised mirror right now, I'd see this…"

"I know what you mean," she breathed into his neck, just for the pleasure of feeling him shiver again.

"I just-" he began, and crushed her to him in another hug, burying his face in her hair. "I can't believe you're here. And you're real. You're not just-"

"I'm real," she whispered into the hollow beneath his ear. She kissed his throat very gently, over and over, ending up in the hollow between his collarbones. "I'm real."

He gave a low, shaky moan and fell back against his pillows, pulling her back with him and ending with her leaning against his chest, half on top of him. One hand crept to the small of her back, the other found the base of her neck and pressed her closer as he kissed her more deeply than he'd yet dared. She felt all the pressure of warm tongue and teeth, then opened her lips and responded the way she wanted to, with all the abandon of reckless, hopeless happiness. His fingertips dug into her back and her hands raked through his hair.

They rested, her head on his chest, his hands stroking her hair and back. She could feel his heart beating beneath her ear, and she placed her hand on his chest above his heart as she'd touched the warm wood of the door, a thousand years ago, before she came into his room.

"Ron?" she said.

He waited a moment before answering. "Say that again, would you?"

"Ron," she said. "There you go. Happy?"

"Very."

"When did you first love me?"

Again, he hesitated. Then, "Hmmmm." Then, "When did I first love you, or when did I first _know_ that I loved you?"

"All right then, when did you know?"

"Yule Ball. Definitely."

"Really? Why?"

He laughed, and she felt his chest vibrate. "Are you kidding me? The minute I saw how gorgeous you were…how gorgeous you'd always been, and I'd just been too much of a prat to see it…I dunno. I got crazy jealous watching you walk into that room with someone else and…everything just sort of fell into place and…I knew. Didn't make things any easier, mind you."

"No, I agree." What was it about the dark that made this so much easier?

"But…that's when," he concluded.

She smiled into his chest.

"So." He joggled one of her hands. "It's your turn. When did you know you loved me?"

"Much sooner."

"How much sooner?"

It was her turn to hesitate before answering, "Second year."

"What?" He sat up a bit. "What do you mean, second year? When?"

She giggled, muffling the sound with her palm and picturing his face, dumbfounded. "The day…the day you spat up the slugs."

"What?" he asked again.

She dissolved into giggles again. "Yes. You were so…I don't know, righteously indignant on my behalf, it was really quite charming. And to go through all that, dueling with Malfoy and your wand backfiring and everything, just because someone called me a-"

"Well, of course."

"And the way you kept pausing in between slugs to spout this whole diatribe about pure-blood snobbery and how wrong it is. You made me feel…well, special."

"Good, but I still remember the taste of those slugs. Yeech."

"So." She sounded much more businesslike, and straightened up so that her forearms rested across his chest, her fingertips playing with the ends of his hair.

"You sound like you have another question for me."

"I do. Since you make the distinction, I'll ask you: when did you first begin to love me, if it wasn't the same time that you realized you loved me?"

"I'm not sure. Whenever I think about it—and I have, many times—all I can picture is this tiny first-year girl alone in a bathroom, standing in front of a huge ugly troll some idiot's just locked in with her."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. That was the first time I really…noticed you, you know? And I realized you were worth…" He paused to take a breath. "You were worth risking everything for."

Another lump rose in her throat. They twined their hands together again and sat silently in the darkness; she could feel his eyes on her, smiled at him, and felt him smile back.

"You have a nice smile," she managed to say.

"How can you tell?"

She slapped him playfully on the shoulder; he grabbed her hand back and kissed it. "I've seen it before. Long ago, when you used to smile. Remember?"

"No," he said. "I never smile." He laced his fingers through hers and settled their hands back on his chest, over his heart. "You must have the wrong guy."

She sat back, feigning offense. "I most certainly do not."

"How do you know? Are you sure you have the right room?"

"Why you-"

"Now, now." He grabbed her other hand and pulled it to his chest, as well, after kissing her fingertips. "Don't go grabbing for your wand."

"I'm not-"

"Hermione," he said, and suddenly their faces were very close again. "I know you."

He kissed her, holding both her hands in his own, and she could have died and been happy. Like Juliet, she thought, before the dagger, and the blood.

She shivered and rested her head on his chest again, working her hands free and thinking of that: Juliet, before the dagger. Hadn't she poisoned herself, with something like the Draught of Living Death?…Shakespeare must have known a few wizards in his own time. _Double, double, toil and trouble_…she fiddled with the buttons on his shirt, not really thinking about what she was doing, finally popping the top one open. Her hand moved down to the next button and worked it open, too. She was thinking of Juliet. _For never was there a tale of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo._ He was very quiet.

When she began to work on the third button down, he grasped her hand again and kissed it gently. "Hermione," he said.

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'd think you'd have worked that out by now. I'm unbuttoning-"

"I know that. But…are you sure you want to…"

"Yes." She sat up straight and went quiet, too.

"I don't know if you…"

"I've had some time to think about this, you realize." Her voice had gone rather stiff. All of a sudden, she felt tears stinging her eyes, a bubble rising in her throat. "Our whole…ruddy…_thing_ this year, whatever it is, has been about nothing but limits and restrictions, and not sharing how we feel, because we're in danger. And I, for one, am sick of it." Her voice was shaking, and she pulled her hand out of his grasp and sat back. "I'm sick of waiting for us. We've wasted enough time. And now you…you're going…and just for tonight…I want…"

The tears were threatening, just on the edge of her voice. His only answer was to lean forward and kiss her again: a crushing, hungry kiss. And with it, he said that he was tired of innuendoes and half-spoken attractions and waiting, too. He told her he wanted her, too.

She hooked her fingers underneath the hem of his shirt and, in another moment, was pulling it off over his head. It fell to the floor. He pulled her closer; she marveled at how smooth and warm his skin was, thrilled at the tickle of hair as her forearm brushed his chest, longed to kiss every inch of him. She pressed her lips to the skin at the top of his shoulders.

He had buried his mouth in the hollow of her throat; she ran her hands along his bare back and sighed as his hands crept under the hem of her shirt. His fingers were rough to the touch as he pressed his fingertips into her backbone. She drew her legs up onto the bed and curled them beside her. He kissed her lips again and moved his hands further up her back; she shivered and wrapped both arms around his neck.

He kissed her and kissed her, and then he pulled back and seemed to be searching for her eyes in the dark, silently trying to ask her if…

She smiled into the darkness. "Yes," she said.

He sighed and pulled at her shirt, pulling it up and over her head and letting it land on the bed behind them. He hesitated for the barest of moments, then his hand found her arm, and traced along it in a now-familiar gesture until his fingertips had reached her shoulder. He hitched over her bra strap and into the hollow of her throat. She could feel him leaning forward, and held her breath.

His mouth caught her along the ridge of one collarbone, and his lips traced a path to her throat, and a rush of longing vaulted up from the core of her body and she launched herself forward and the lace of her bra was crushed against his chest and all of a sudden he was kissing her fiercely, forcing her mouth open with his own, but his hands were gentle, exploring every contour of her back.

His fingertips traced her shoulder blades and caught in her bra straps and slid one strap down onto her shoulder, and then his mouth was blazing hot on that shoulder again, and she took a deep breath in and bit her lip and moaned, way down deep in her throat, and she found her arm reaching back and undoing the clasp of her bra in one quick movement, and it fell off onto the bed beside them.

She pulled away from him, then. She hadn't planned on…this. But now that it was here…she found herself searching out his eyes in the darkness, as he had done for her. Her breath rushed in and out of her and her heart rocketed around in her chest in a way that would have been quite alarming, had she given it any thought. She found she was too busy listening for his ragged breath, coming closer and closer until she could feel his breath on her throat.

And then she was in his arms again, and they were melting around one another. And his bare skin against hers was the sweetest sensation imaginable. As her breasts touched his bare chest, he moaned into her throat, a whispered "Oh," and his arms were twined around her again, and he was pulling her forward again, and she felt him actually lift her up and over so that she was sitting across his lap.

She had never been this close to him. She could feel every muscle of him, feel how he trembled with longing for her, feel his heart pounding in time with hers. She felt drunk on the scent of him, the cloves-and-cut-grass smell of his hair, and on the texture of his kisses, as though they were drinking from one another.

He drew back again and searched for her eyes a third time, and she sighed without a word and leaned forward, kissing him lightly under the jaw. He sighed back, and his hand drifted up to her collarbone and began stroking it, back and forth, before drifting lower along her chest.

His fingertips touched her, her eyes fluttered closed and her head tipped back. She let out a new sound, half-keening, half-singing, as a flame leapt from her belly to her head and he whispered "You are so beautiful," and his breath tickled her ear. And there was no more world outside as he fell back again, pulling her with him. She fell off his lap onto her back, and he turned onto his side beside her and began kissing her again, and then they were twined together, legs and arms and his mouth on her breast and his rough-and-tender hands all over, and her fingers twined in his hair.

And she felt him against her leg, and he moaned and kissed her harder, drawing blood to the skin of her throat. And she thought she'd die gladly from this, the pleasure of knowing he wanted her and the ache of the flames licking at her belly.

And then he said, "Wait."

"What?"

"Hermione…wait."

"Wait…what?"

"Not now." He was still pressed against her, the whole length of their bodies touching, and he was breathing in long, measured breaths now, as though forcing himself to be calm. "I want to wait…until the sun rises." His hand caressed the skin of her abdomen and his knuckles grazed her breast, and he drew in a sharp breath and drew his hand away and cupped her face instead. His mouth was very close to hers as he said, "I want to be able to look into your eyes." He kissed her, gently. "Okay?"

She answered by kissing him back, and twining her wrists around his neck, and sighing deeply and resting back against the pillows, with her head next to his. For a while there was no sound but their breathing.

Then, she said, "When I was little, I went to a Catholic primary school."

He froze beside her, and she could almost feel his eyes widening. Then, in a fake-radio-commentator voice, he said, "Brought to you by the department of non-sequitors…"

"You have learned some big words from me, haven't you?"

"Yeah. And you're mentioning the Catholic school thing now because…"

She shrugged. "Just making conversation."

"Well. If you're trying to turn me off, Catholic school is not the way to go. Those little skirts…"

"Oh, you." She slapped him lightly on the arm. "I didn't want to talk about the skirts. Pervert."

"Well, what then? The fact that they think we're all going to Hell when we die?"

It was Hermione's turn to freeze beside him. "That's not what they think."

"Yeah it is. 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' It's right in the Bible."

"The Bible says a lot of things. Not all of them are true any more."

"Right."

"Anyway. That wasn't my point. At this school I went to, there were nuns teaching the classes…"

"What? The ladies in black robes, with wings on their hats, that can fly?"

"You're thinking of 'The Flying Nun,' and that was just make-believe, they can't really fly. No, these nuns were just ordinary ladies, and they used to talk to us about…well, a lot of stuff, but the three most important rules were loving your neighbor, and forgiveness when someone has wronged you, and meekly following the path of righteousness." She said this last bit with an eye roll which clearly came through in her voice, because Ron began chuckling again.

"I can imagine how good you were at that."

She laughed, too. "I was never very meek. I always had too many questions for that. And I'm not very good at…forgiving. Not so much when someone has wronged me, but when they hurt my friend, or someone I love…" She shivered. She thought of the Malfoys, of Wormtail, of Snape. "I just can't forgive."

He pulled her close again and spoke into her hair. "Well, you've got the 'loving your neighbor' part down, all right."

"Yes. That was never a problem. I could always…love."

She buried her face in his neck and breathed him in, and there was no help for it: the tears puddled up within her and flooded out, splashing her cheeks and wetting his shoulder.

"Hey…" he said. He stroked her face, wiping at the tears that wouldn't stop coming. "Hey, don't cry. Oh God, Hermione, please don't cry. I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"It's not…" she said. "It's just…I can't bear it…you can't go, you just can't."

"I have to."

"I know, but…in the morning, it's just…oh, you can't." And she broke into sobs, crying against his chest as he held her. "I won't let you go."

"You can't stop me."

"I know…"

He held her and kissed at her cheeks, and the sobs tapered off into random sniffs. She rolled onto her side, away from him, and he draped his arm around her waist and clasped her hand. And when he heard her breaths even out and deepen, and felt her hand slacken its grip on his, he knew that she had fallen asleep crying for him, and he left her to her hour of rest.

And as the sky lightened from black to mauve to pale grey, Ron knew that as long as he lived, whether it be one more day or one hundred more years, he would never forget the sight of Hermione's face, melting out of the darkness beside him, her translucent eyelids and pale brown lashes catching the first rays of morning. The sight of her eyelids fluttering, her creamy brow creasing and then smoothing out as she realized where she was, her wide, honest smile as she turned her face to his, her chocolate-brown eyes flecked with gold.

The first thing she said to him was; "I don't want you to tell me when you're going. I just want you to go. I don't want to have to say goodbye."

He nodded. And they kissed again, in the daylight.

Some time later, she was crying again.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked. He was holding her face in his two hands again. "Please don't say I hurt you. Oh God, I'm so sorry."

"No, it's not that. You didn't," she said. "It's just…I don't know if I'll ever see you again, and I can't bear it."

He thought for a moment, then reached up onto the pillows behind her head and clasped both her hands in his. "I can promise you'll see me again."

"But how?"

"Well…" he leaned down to kiss her lips. "If I live, I'm coming back to you."

"You'd better." She nudged him with her leg, and he grinned.

"You couldn't keep me away if you tried. And if I die…" he shifted his gaze away from her eyes and began toying with a strand of her curly hair. "If I die, I'm still coming back to you." He looked back at her, completely serious.

Hermione took a moment to process this. Then she shifted her body beneath his, so she could look at him more squarely. "That is a bitter promise, Ron Weasley."

"Maybe it is," he said. He wrapped another strand of hair around one of his fingers and gazed at it thoughtfully as it unwound itself. "But I meant it."

She fixed her eyes on his. "Then I promise the same," she said.

"I love you," he said.

"Just remember who said it first." She knew she was wearing her Smug Face; she couldn't help it.

"Actually…" he said, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow, "I believe it was me."

She frowned. "It was you what?"

"I said I loved you, first."

"Um, Ron, I was there."

"I know you were."

"I said-"

"You said: 'Don't worry, we can fix it,' and you started to correct all of my misspelled words…"

Hermione gasped. "That didn't count."

"Sure it did."

"But you didn't mean it."

"I did." He kissed her lips. "I did, and I still do." He kissed her again. "And I meant it when I said I'm coming back, no matter what."

And the next kiss did not end for a long while, and the first rays of morning made their way through the window, and all the time Hermione was thinking, _It was the nightingale, my love, believe me, the nightingale…_

And when she awoke some time later, he was gone.


End file.
